The court of Rome reaffirms the application of the rules of copyright for the pictures posted on the social network by establishing that publication of photos on the Facebook page of the person who has taken them "does not involve the complete waiver of the relative copyright".

According to the Court, the freedom of use of the content posted by users by setting the 'Public' function does not cover the content that is published and which covered by intellectual property rights of users, for which the only license is the non-exclusive, transferable granted to Facebook". Under this principle the author of some photos published on Facebook was awarded damages against a newspaper that had published the same without permission.

The case stems from the publication of some photos on the personal page Facebook of a young photographer shot in nightclub in Rome. The photos then appeared, unknown to the author, in a national newspaper in support of a series of newspaper articles, related to the phenomenon of frequenting nightclubs by persons of young age and subsequently re-used by some programs television of national importance.